Archive for the ‘politics’ Tag

I have every confidence that my choice for Labour Party Parliamentary Candidate in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip Constituency will be the one I and my branch chose in the long listing ruse we all participated in Saturday in Uxbridge. I will honour the verbal confidentiality agreement with regards to the discussions (which I found most helpful and am grateful to have had a chance to participate in). But, I have to set all of that aside and tender my membership resignation effective immediately.

A half hour into our conclave, the chair of the meeting had worked her way through the other branches of the constituency to inform us — as she had been doing with the others — that our nominations would next go to the nominating committee without any of the other branches knowing who we nominated (nor we them) nor even a list of all nominations without identifying the branches involved. This is done, we were informed, so that the nominating committee could strike or add candidates of their choice when they meet in private later this week.

Where’s the accountability? Does it not occur to you that this is why potentially Labour voters (especially in a fundamentally right-of-centre constituency as ours) can’t be mobilised?

Take a lesson from the most recent US Presidential Election when the Democratic Party should have easily walked away with the keys to the White House but instead allowed Superdelegates (essentially the equivalent of the Star Chamber nominating committee, in our case) to shit all over the electorate.

I will very likely vote Labour in the next parliamentary plebiscite but I steadfastly refuse to be treated like an ignorant plebe by a party I have been trying to participate in over and above my now terminated financial support.

Pull yourselves together, morons. This is all you have to beat, so long as you don’t beat yourselves:

I read all the personal statements, shitcanned some based on their obvious Blairite sympathies (why don’t you just join the Tories, already*? Not you, Eddie, but those others…), dumped those in the shortlist that seemed single-issue oriented**, and — with pain — cut the last two or three to make 9 and 4 for the two committees. I voted online, but I had a paper ballot, above, and kept it on the fridge to remind me to see how my brackets panned out.

*The link is funny for overlooking the intolerance to new ideas the “Neue Labour” faction has exhibited since the initial leadership election and subsequent challenges that started the current shadow government.

**”I’m trans, and I carried a placard on a march a couple of times. You have to vote for me or you are against the LGBTxxx Community,” or, “I suffer with Aspergers and my resulting lack of empathy means I deserve this position to work for the rights of others exactly like myself, or indeed, for myself.”

In a classically dickish Trump Administration move, the US Embassy issued a safety Alert for American citizens (most of whom, it turned out, were in the crowd with me). I think that, despite the generally festive atmosphere this will have resulted in some morons holing up in their hotel rooms to hide from the inevitable violence in this lawless town. If it hasn’t happened yet, cue some fat family on Fox News claiming they had to miss a trip to the wax museum because of the angry crowds 1/2 a mile away. Sad.

We didn’t take a lot of photos and there are plenty of them on the Interwebs already. The one at the top of this article was one I found of our placards. In browsing around, however, I haven’t seen a copy of this one:

Here’s a short video for a sense of scale:

Which also caught the eye of some Twitter wags:

Upon arrival at Trafalgar Square, we realised we could not get close enough to hear any of the speeches so I dunked my hat in the fountain to help cool off and we headed to Gordon’s Wine Bar and got stuck into a conversation with a couple of tables worth of first time protesters. This really was the most civilised of this sort of protest, ever.

I’ve got this feeling that the timing and setting of this assassination attempt (perhaps successful, by now) in Salisbury was meant as a message sent to witnesses in the FBI probe. “We can kill you anywhere, anytime,” is what it tells us, even if you’ve holed up in a bucolic, small city in the Wiltshire countryside; just think how much easier it would be to do in a big town like DC or New York City. The prospect of a lengthy jail term for obstruction will have to be weighed against this new — yet, somehow nostalgic — Eastern option.